Peter Bogdanovich Quotes

I think a lot of Hollywood is in retreat right now trying to figure out how to make money and make the safest bets.

The catch in the industry is that if you want to get a picture made for little money, you have to get a big star. But the two are usually mutually exclusive.

If I give five flops, I won't get a job. You have to perform at the box office when you are at the top. No one is running a charity here. People are putting huge amounts of money to make movies, and they want the films to be successful. They have invested money in you, so it is your duty to make sure the film does well.

Films must all have the same structure. All of this to guarantee box office bonanza, which of course it never does, but that's another discussion entirely.

I don't really have much to prove. I can easily go in a comfort zone, make two films a year, hype them because I've signed them as a star, make them cheap and they will be big hits.

I am always surprised at what movie studios think people will want to see. I'm even more surprised at how often they are correct.

Film is much more of a brand business, whereas on Broadway, you can do complete unknowns and have hits.

The film business is absurd. Stars don't last very long. It's much more interesting to be a proper actor.

Now a movie goes out to two, three thousand theaters and by Friday night at 10 o'clock they know if you are in or out. That desperate competition is, I think, horrendous. It's awful.

Last year, when 'Black Swan,' 'True Grit' and 'King's Speech' all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies and not do the same old you-know-what.

Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year.

Hollywood, at the bottom of it, is about money.

The film business seems to attract rules more than any other business. I don't know why it does. I think it's because there's so much money at stake.

It's sad - it's sad for us old enough to remember when directors ruled, and films were substantially better than they are today. But it's hard to argue with those kinds of grosses.

There are really only a handful of directors who have a final cut clause in Hollywood. You only get that power if you've made a couple of hundred-million-dollar successes.

It would have been impossible to get 'The Verdict' off the ground without Paul Newman obviously, but today without any star, kind of a dramatic piece would be very tough.

You know, social issue movies don't make a lot of money.

You have to be in movies that make money to be offered work. Basically that's the equation. There's no real way around that. That said, you don't ever make decisions solely for that reason.

The studios don't seem to foster good writing. They're not so interested in that, but they're more interested in what worked most recently. They're definitely very serious about making money, and that's not a wrong thing, but you don't have to make money the same way all the time.

You don't hear a film director saying 'Money mustn't go out of the industry' to actors. You don't hear a concert promoter saying 'We must make sure that money doesn't go out of our industry' to Elton John. Some people in football seem to think, 'Never mind the players, let's get on with the game.'

If you really want to be competitive in today's market you have to be in movies that make money.

There's this index that tallies up how much your movies have made, and if they haven't grossed a certain amount, then you're not bankable. I know I'm not Will Smith but, you know, my ranking's pretty low. The only studio picture I've done is 'Zodiac,' and that didn't perform that well.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you'll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It's a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.

Today it's not culture; it's box office.